Shadowed Flower
by Dashita Tichou
Summary: A series of one-shots about Rangiku Matsumoto as she moves through life. Sporadically updated, some AUs.
1. Shadow

Always a shadow. There was no other way to describe the fearless, powerful, and beautiful fukutaicho of the tenth division. She kept to the shadows while the others shone around her. At first, it had hurt. She was Shiba-Taicho's second in command, not Tōshirō. Never Tōshirō. But…. The younger soul had a brighter potential than she did. He was ice and fire contained within the composed facade of serenity.

For some time, she held that against him. Eventually though, she realized that she was never meant to step up. Ever. But that was okay. She was destined to be the flower shadowed in darkness to follow the strikes of dragons. Dust is to dust as ashes are to ashes. Anyways, ashes are harder to track in darkness than in the light.

She was beautiful and the eye was naturally drawn to her figure, but that was, in part, on purpose. Enemies always underestimate women, particularly those who seem fragile. So she wears the more frivolous of her emotions on her sleeve, allows her love of shopping to define how others view her while she silently contemplates the second division.

She is more like Soi fon than she lets others catch onto. Where the petite taicho's disguise is behind the silence of night, her burning heart hidden within its darkened fold, Rangiku is the opposite. Her disguise is the brightness of day, dragging her away from the shadows that define her so well. She contemplates every angle and its implications in how she will be viewed. While the most cherished part of herself longs for the silvery light of the moon, she instead burns herself in the fiery inferno of the sun. Thus is her punishment.

She could not save him. Therefore she hides herself away from everything she should have been, pain, disgust, ( _assassin…_ a part of her whispers) and forces herself to be the parts of her personality, as minute as they were at first, that he loved _(It is still not enough. It is never enough and she is well aware of this fact. But does that stop her? No.)_ and cherished because she knows that the dark side of the moon always covets the sun. However… she knows that she is no sun.

She is the shadows it leaves behind.

 **AUTHOR'S RAMBLINGS**

 **So, apparently I like writing tiny burbles about Matsumoto Rangiku... These will be updated sporadically and probably not very long. They may or may not be continuous and some may be AU. Let me know what y'all think!**


	2. Wind and Letters

It is the wind that first snatches the beloved necklace away from her, an unexpectedly strong force on a mild day snatched it out of her grasp. For a moment she is speechless. The one moment where it was not connected to her very being was the moment nature had struck.

However, her shock is only temporary. She leaps to her feet with an undignified roar and shunpos after her most precious possession. It only takes her a few seconds to catch the silver glint as it soared across the sky, but those few seconds stretch out into a millennia in her haste.

She tangles her fingers in the chain and holds it close for a moment, thinking of the first time she met the man who gifted it to her.

It had been the shift in the wind that had first alerted her to his presence over her weakened form all the years ago.

It had been the shift in the wind that had taken him away from her towards Aizen on the Sokyoku Hill, sealing him away from her in the Negacion.

And finally, it had been the wind that had mingled her tear with his last breath as he sighed out a goodbye.

* * *

Some would say that it is pathetic, but Rangiku Matsumoto does not. Ignoring their criticisms, she continues. Pages flock the desk around her, but they are not her paperwork. (Either way, if Toshiro walked in at that moment, Rangiku is sure that the wintry taicho would still suffer a heart attack. Not that the situation could happen. Rangiku is hidden away within her private quarters, not the clean cut lines of the office. This kind of work is too dark for the bright lights and windows of the office.)

Instead, the papers fluttering down around her are notes. To the only man she has ever loved, each starts out exactly the same.

 _Gin… I'm sorry..._

For several, that is as far as she got. Others go on, detailing adventures of her life to the man that can no longer hear them, like a dragon describing its hoard to the skeletons that sit atop it. Although it has been months, years even, since the death of the double agent, Rangiku finds that she cannot let his image rest. And so, she writes letters.

 **AUTHOR'S RAMBLINGS**

 **So here's a couple more blurbs. Very GinRan-centric. This'll probably happen a lot. Let me know what you guys think!**


End file.
